Battle lines drawn

Friends of both camps will deny it to the heavens, but it looks like battle lines have been drawn between the current and previous administrations, and the vaunted UniTeam is coming apart.

So far the warring camps are portraying President Marcos to be above the fray. But how long before the acts of Speaker Martin Romualdez against the Duterte camp are seen to have the blessings of BBM?

Upon the resumption of sessions last Monday after the break for the village elections and holidays for the dead, among the first items on the agenda of the House of Representatives was to lambast critics of the chamber.

Romualdez did not mention any names or go into specifics. But his ally, Senior Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales Jr., went on the record to identify former president Rodrigo Duterte, who recently described Congress as the “most rotten institution,” and who pointed to Romualdez as the one with the biggest unaudited funding allocation of them all.

Before naming names, Gonzales announced he was quitting Duterte’s party the PDP-Laban.

The next day, Duterte sniffed that he didn’t care if he ended up as the only member left in the PDP-Laban; he wouldn’t stop anyone from bolting.

He said this in his radio program wherein he also admitted meeting with several retired military generals, but denied that they discussed destabilization or a coup attempt.

Only government corruption would generate public sympathy for a coup, Duterte said, and it is still too early to pass judgment on the magnitude of the problem under BBM.

While urging the people to continue supporting the Marcos administration (of which his daughter Sara after all is part of), Duterte has never been one to mask his dislike for anyone.

Rating BBM’s performance in the past 16 months, Duterte gave the man he once described as a weakling compared to Ferdinand Senior a rating of six. With 10 the highest, that’s a barely passing, unflattering assessment.

There was no immediate comment from Malacañang, but BBM’s favorite cousin the Speaker struck another blow on Tuesday, this time against Duterte supporters.

Sara Duterte’s staunch ally Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was earlier demoted from senior deputy